Neuroplasticity is the “magic sauce” for overcoming contractures and spasticity long-term.

As you practice hand exercises, you create and strengthen neural pathways in your brain that control your hand. Repetition is the key.

The more you repeat your hand exercises, the more you will strengthen the neural pathways.

With consistency, your hand will start to open up, relax, and cooperate.

This is the most important step, but sometimes it can be difficult…

What If Your Contractures Prevents Exercise?

A common complaint among stroke survivors is that the hand is too clenched and paralyzed to do any exercise!

We understand this frustration, and you can work around it with passive exercise.

Passive exercise simply means that you use your non-affected hand to assist your affected hand through various hand rehab exercises.

Although you aren’t “doing it yourself,” the repetitive movement still activates neuroplasticity and starts to relink mind to muscle.

As you keep up with your repetitive passive exercise, your hand will slooowwly open up.

In due time, your hand will recover enough to begin exercise without any help from your non-affected hand.

And after enough repetitive exercise, your contractures will slowly disappear.

Which Treatments Are Best for You?

Now, why did we bother with the first two treatments if the third one (rehab exercise) is clearly the best?

Our answer: Because Botox and hand splints can help clear the path towards repetitive exercise.

If your hand is severely clenched and stiff with contractures, then doing passive exercise might be very difficult at first.

Our advice is to use Botox, if you can, to temporarily relieve your spasticity, and then use that new range of motion to get lots of exercise in.

Although the Botox will wear off, the exercise will help heal your brain and reconnect mind to muscle. Then, once the Botox wears off, you will still retain some results from all the neuroplasticity you activated.

So, if you have the resources, try to use all 3 treatments combined. Use hand splints and Botox to open up your hand enough to get some good exercise in.

But make sure that hand exercise is always the star of your regimen. It’s the ticket to lasting results.

See her? She didn’t skip her hand exercises

Your Next Steps

Alright. Let’s tie this all together with some practical steps that you can start taking today:

Call your therapist and ask if you’re a good candidate for Botox (if you are, schedule an appointment ASAP)

Start gently stretching your hand using a splint or other flat-ish surface (like a basketball)

We will never sell your email address, and we never spam. That we promise.

First Name*

Email*

Stroke Survivor Spotlight

"My husband had a torn aorta and underwent emergency open heart surgery, then there were multiple complications and he was on life support for 10 days.

After 10 weeks in the hospital, he is expected to make a full recovery. The biggest hurtle to his recovery has been his left hand, between the muscle atrophy and brain trauma, he had very little control of it.

As a professional musician, being unable to even hold a guitar was hard, to say the least. Despite weeks of PT & OT, his hand function had barely improved.

We ordered the MusicGlove and received it in 2 days. He began using it right away. He spent over an hour with it the first day. That is what makes it work so well, it's way more interesting and rewarding than trying to pick up a peg.

In OT, he struggled to do any of the exercises, and the at-home exercises were mainly strengthening.

After only a few days with the Music Glove, he was able to pick up and hold his guitar. and after 3 weeks, he can play 3 chords.

The MusicGlove and program are engaging. He uses it daily for an hour - and he wants to do it. His 1st time using it, I could barely get it on, his hand was moving so much; his accuracy was about 30% and he had difficulty even doing some of the fingers.

Now, after only a few weeks, his uncontrolled motion is about 60% better, I can easily & quickly get the glove on, his accuracy is over 90% - on all fingers, and he now can do multiple fingers. I would highly recommend this product."